WELTSTADT

Self initiative is spreading © Rose Epple

by Sonja Beeck, Weltstadt Correspondent in Lisbon

Supposedly there hasn’t been all that much movement in Portugal in recent years. The economy has been tottering along for a considerable time now. Unemployment was already high before the crisis, but has risen massively in the wake of austerity measures taken in response to the crisis. Only those people with jobs are in motion, to the extent that they commute daily from their homes to their workplaces. Those who do not wish to live in uncomfortable old buildings in the city center move to more comfortable residential buildings on the outskirts of the city or better yet, build a house in the urban fringe. The opulent revitalisation of Portugal’s entire infrastructure in the past two decades was financed by EU programs. Cheap loans and the home-ownership lifestyle favored by the middle class have also been a considerable force behind urban sprawl, and at the same time left dilapidated areas in the cities. The results of this policy, promoted by EU funding, are all too evident in Lisbon’s older districts such as Alfama and Mouraria as well.

The visible decay of building substance in the city centers was particularly intensive throughout Europe in the 1950’s until the 1980’s. We are all too familiar with the demonization of the city of the 19th century and of yet older buildings, it spans the period from euphoric modernity through
to the most recent past. In many areas in the GDR, only socially marginalized people and the elderly were living in the dilapidated city centers. But a point came in both east and west, from Amsterdam to Vienna – mostly initiated by the state – when countermeasures began to be taken. As early as the late 1970’s attempts were made in the German Federal Republic and in Austria to rescue building substance and to make living in the city centers attractive through large-scale urban development programs. Today, in Vienna’s 1st District, top-market penthouses are being sold and experts are writing about an urban renaissance. In many major cities, displacement and gentrification are under discussion rather than decay. Things are different in Lisbon.

The discontent was vented in November 2012. The disaster came from without and had a name: Angela Merkel. If one speaks with demonstrators today, some of whom underwent an awakening back then, one feels resentment towards Berlin less and far more anger about the situation within the country. The younger generation does not have the impression that the state is mastering the situation with dedication and drive. Unlike in Germany, people here have scarcely any faith in comprehensive urban development programs, the “social city” or identifying areas for redevelopment or all the other instruments of sovereign urban and regional planning.

However, although enjoying little visibility now, in the last 10-15 years the demographic and physical decay of Lisbon’s inner city has been countered by
a few initiatives. At the municipal level, renovation programs in several city districts have taken root and are gradually changing the face of these districts, in many cases in close partnership with authorities, landlords and local organizations. Limited demographic and economic dynamics can now be observed in a few areas of inner-city neighborhoods. Furthermore, the national political discourse has discovered the theme of urban revitalization and renovation as an issue for stimulating the economy and employment. Despite these interventions, Lisbon’s inner city is still markedly lagging behind most other EU capitals with respect to renovation efforts and investments.

But they do exist, these individual measures, which as with acupuncture, can have great effects. The small, strategic and cooperative initiatives of “we-trading” that can make the transition in Lisbon possible. And an attentive and often astonishingly open-minded administration and policy- making a partner of these initiatives; not with large-scale programs for which the funds simply do not exist. Instead, ideas
of engaged citizens are given support in amazingly uncomplicated ways. The citizens draw attention to themselves, whether loudly or quietly, they have visions they try things out, they learn in the process, and they are the opposite of the universally lamented inertia. They proceed pragmatically and begin with astonishing directness. Most striking is the fact that the solutions for abuses are being developed by a dedicated team of women

Using New Systems

Take, for example, the two young architects Lucinda Correia and Ana Jara, who have set their minds on counteracting the vacancy rate in Lisbon’s historic city center. A vacancy rate with a multiplicity of causes. In 2012, under pressure from the so called Troika, the conservative government eliminated one of the causes by revising the Portuguese rental law. More than 700,000 rental contracts throughout Portugal must now be renegotiated, since ental contracts stemming from the days of the monarchy with accordingly favorable terms were still in existence, which failed to cover maintenance expenses by far.
In line with this, there has been scarcely any investment in properties in Lisbon’s city center. Well, one can either wait for outside investors or motivate the locals to take matters into their own hands. For this purpose, the two architects, together with a few other colleagues, have created the Internet platform Agulha num palheiro (needle in the haystack). There, houses for sale can be cataloged and offered by private persons. At the same time, they are developing a renovation handbook to allay possible purchasers’ fears of too-great investments, since the renovation of the Old City’s rundown buildings, as much as 41%, will be effected by the citizens themselves. Lisbon is by no means cheap, in spite of the visible decay. Although mostly in poor condition, apartments are not offered at bargain-basement prices. It seems as if completely different market forces are already at work here. Are investors already waiting for the starting shot of the really big run? Who are the owners of all those buildings in the city-center barrios?

The platform is sensibly aiming to create a small market for the empty and decaying buildings via the Internet, but this might possibly be attracting precisely those players with whom many another city center has had bitter experiences. People with so much money that they do not know where else to park it. And if renovation takes place on a grand scale, the current residents cannot stay. The scale of investment would entail their displacement. Are the architects perhaps naive, or is their strategy the right one to get things moving? Although use is the best conservation, it too can herald an undesired development at whose end perhaps none are still living there of those who, for instance, are here and there transforming the old quarter Alfama into a truly magical place.

Stimulation

Many older and above all not exactly wealthy people are still living in Alfama. The historic quarter in the vicinity of the harbor features attractive squares and romantic little alleyways. Today, though, the squares are more or less deserted, since neither density nor communication in the quarter are no longer anywhere nearly as intensive as in the past, when residents still knew each other over generations. But an urban neighbourhood’s life consists in its people knowing each other, speaking with each other and helping each other, we-trading, in other words. This is where Lucia Luísa Alpalhão’s project A Linha (line) takes its point of departure. She went to London in 2002, in the midst of Portugal’s upswing and long before the crisis. She returned in 2011, to apply what she had learned at The Bartlett School of Architecture University College London (Faculty of the Built Environment) in her quarter, to promote participation and engagement by means of artistic interventions and performative planning. She laid down routes to lend visibility to special and valuable features of the quarter. During one summer, joint actions and meals were held with the aim of promoting the community of children, adults, seniors, neighbours and local small business people. “Community building” – is the name of the strategy in which everyone gets involved with what is in fact theirs, making visible the functions of public space and piercing through lethargy. Furnishing the city and festivals were aimed at strengthening
the sense of community through joint activities. Why did this project, which had been initiated with such enthusiasm, fail to take root and flower, as the architect self-critically reported. Because it rained? Because things were stolen? Because residents complained about the lively discussions on the streets? Did this social animation in the spirit of The Bartlett s not fail to interest the residents? Where were the mistakes? What can be learned from this experiment? Is Alfama perhaps not so easy to revitalize – or instead with small- scale interventions only with the stoic obstinacy of those who remain? Where is the residents’ obstinacy? A city is a system full of obstinacy and self-will – it has as much self-will as it has inhabitants.

Basic Rituals

Self-will can also be observed in another quarter, and what is being referenced here is not the Mouraria’s steep slope or noticeably dilapidated building substance. Many buildings have already been secured by the city to prevent injury to passers- by through falling stones or pieces of plaster. There are many problems in this neighbourhood, ranging from drugs and poverty to unemployment, violence and a prostitution. Real-estate developers haven’t discovered Mouraria as yet, but if one wanders through the fairy-tale-like gardens and discovers the beautiful views, anybody will understand what will happen when the next economic upswing comes. What can the residents do themselves to contribute to solving the problems? Cook, maybe!?


Adriana Freire lives here, is from here and is staying here. She in fact started cooking one day, not just for herself, but for others as well. Adriana is an institution, she is known in the Mouraria quarter, but also the readers of the magazine Monocle have heard about her. Two years ago, Adriana installed a kitchen and dining-room in a former garage. The place is lively, inviting, unpretentious, and at the same time modern and elegant. And the food is simply delicious. People in the know come here every Wednesday. Some help out, and others come out of curiosity. A meal costs five Euros. In this way, the project finances itself one way or another; but Adriana would like to have the City of Lisbon support her and expand the project. She dreams of the vacant property across the street, where today only cats live and a restaurant set up by the city for which she need not pay rent any longer. The burden of Adriana’s 2000 Euro monthly overhead, including a paid cook, is too great and can scarcely be covered by what is earned. Visitors are disconcerted by the fact that she pays 500 Euros rent for a self-built garage. Obviously, public sponsorship is needed in addition to self-will. And time and again, small institutions of the municipal administration stand behind these persons and their ideas, providing the first impetus and in Adriana’s case financed the first kitchen equipment.

Up-Close, Direct Support

The kitchen, the real-estate platform, and also the artistic interventions were or are all supported by BIP/ZIP (Bairros e Zonas de Intervenção Prioritária), a program developed by the city for priority measures in difficult city neighbourhoods. The need for action was determined following detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative data on building substance as well as of social, climatic and economic indicators. Hybrid micro-projects situated on the boundary between social work, art in public space, economic advancement and urban development. This intelligent type of support is what has made one other small but sophisticated project possible in the first place, since none of the protagonists would have been in a position to take on the financial risk of investments that will remain unprofitable for the foreseeable future, in addition to their enthusiasm, persistence and the work they have performed with endless patience. Among the initiatives of the City of Lisbon is a local program for creating and improving residential space, a program conceived as habitat. Here, city neighbourhoods are identified where there is a great deal of catching- up to do. A total of 67 such areas were identified in which many young, but also a great many elderly people live. BIP/ZIP is a tool for supporting on-site projects. Available capacities are organized in network format and existing neighbourhood groups and organizations energized.

What do these projects have in common strategically? They are the acupuncture for city districts mentioned above, that are either in a state of shock or have withdrawn into a real-life fado. They do exist, these little initiatives, each of which, taken for itself alone, appears exemplary, transferrable and relevant, and all of which symbolize the transition. It is nonetheless questionable whether some higher authority or other will exert itself to analyse the projects and construct advanced support programs, legislation and strategies on this basis. If Europe needs a stronger South, as Claus Leggewie never tired of emphasizing during the We-Traders Forum in Lisbon, then in countries like Portugal the young potential of people who are organizing themselves in flexible networks must be systematically supported.

We are firmly convinced that particularly these small initiatives in their totality are having an effect, that these very forms are pointing the way to the future. Today, however, they are fragile, isolated phenomena that need to be imitated en masse and require a clear-cut intermeshing and integration with larger structures.

O Espelho

“Where there is danger, the rescue grows as well,” as Leggewie encouraged the lively We-Traders round table with Hölderlin’s words, and one might add: “near, but hard to grasp” are the simple little solutions.
A solution like that of the Lisbon Mirror, O Espelho. It intensively criticizes public discussion and beyond this the media. O Espelho does not emulate television and is also no typical print magazine, but instead a message pasted on walls. A wall newspaper comes from below. Editors come together and publish their various opinions. Is it art or fact-based communication? – Who is the sender, who the receiver?
They are words that move people, words on walls that draw attention to themselves. An old medium of the Bolsheviks, agitprop to make the workers finally wake up, is being revived in the digital age. O Espelho recalls Friedrich Wolf’s dictum that art is a weapon, in other words a medium to bring about concrete, palpable change.

A wall newspaper seeks to create a public that identifies with the spirit of the demonstrations of April 25, 1975. It is no accident that O Espelho arose in the wake of the demonstrations during the visit of Angela Merkel in November 2012. What all seventeen editors throughout Portugal felt and are still feeling was a lack of team spirit and cooperation in all the “co-working” and “network” projects. The financing medium of crowd-funding, born out of need, that the wall-paper’s opinion-makers set in motion anew with each edition, is a product of contemporary, diverse electronic connections. Digital networking enables analog engagement. The paper’s muted graphics deliberately eschew the sensationalistic design of mainstream media. Texts are set in neutral, clear letters and are written by a variety of authors, some well-known, others less so until now. However, the Mirror enjoys the greatest attention not on the street, but in other newspapers, on television and above all in the Internet on its Facebook page. The movement’s voice can be heard on one’s smartphone, but it is also perceptible in old, analog contexts, on the walls of the city, where urban and therefore public life cannot shut itself off from it.
What is public space? Who informs, who discusses, who or what in fact holds society together? Who is the antidote to narcotic stupor? Who will yell? Aesthetics contra anaesthetics, as alternative to the 24-hour TV programs oozing the soap operas that are putting all of Portugal to sleep every day. But will the Mirror reach the people to whom it is addressed, who are still watching TV and are expected to read close-up all of a sudden? Will a collective self-reflection take place? There is currently also a great deal of hope in the mix of factors, and a pleasant activism that aims at the micro- level, at the local neighborhood. Editor Maria Tengarrinha does not seek to publish throughout Portugal, but rather in one particular quarter, in the bairro, to give
the people there the opportunity to share experiences and take positions on local issues. To speak about what they deal with every day, what annoys them or makes them happy, what is causing problems, but also what enables withdrawal. All such things must be discussed if things are to be gently and carefully changed, and gradually begin to bloom again.